Standard of the Holy Trinity

This is one of the earliest things Raphael ever painted, made around 1499 when he was still a teenager, not yet the star of Rome. It is not a picture for a wall but a processional banner, meant to be carried aloft through the streets of the small Umbrian town of Citta di Castello. The townspeople paid for it to give thanks that a plague had lifted. That is why two particular saints stand beside the Trinity here, Roch and Sebastian, the pair people prayed to for protection against plague. The banner is painted on both sides on thin cloth so it could be seen coming and going. It is the only work by Raphael still left in the town that gave him some of his first commissions.